On the final weekend before Election Day, the race for Texas’ only consistently swing district remains fierce as ever, with both candidates making their last pitch to voters — from the eastern edges of El Paso to the outside bounds of San Antonio — and a renewed debate about the candidates’ residency in the 23rd Congressional District.

Fueled by the record-smashing early-vote turnouts for midterm elections in both Bexar and El Paso counties, Republican incumbent Will Hurd and Democratic challenger Gina Ortiz Jones continued to pound the pavement in their effort to win the most competitive congressional district in Texas.

Hurd, a former CIA agent, spent Friday night in Del Rio, where concerns about border security are top of mind for swing voters. Jones, an Air Force veteran, has made the border town a main focus of her campaign. Both candidates were on their home turf of Bexar County — where the key military vote tends to lean Republican — over the weekend.

“Looking at the spread of the district, the way that Democrats win is that they have big numbers in El Paso and they have lack of enthusiasm for Republicans in Bexar County,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “The margins here are in the thousands, so a spike in turnout among a constituency that doesn’t vote in midterms is a real issue for Republicans.”

Hurd appeared to be running away with the election in early October. A New York Times/Siena College poll in late September had Hurd ahead 51 to 43 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. A second round of that poll in mid-October showed Hurd with a commanding lead, with 53 percent of voters choosing Hurd over 38 percent who would vote for Jones.

The National Republican Congressional Committee appeared comfortable enough with the lead that it pulled spending on ads for Hurd in the district in mid-October. But in the last week, the NRCC jumped back into the race, pouring $600,000 into anti-Jones ads in the final days of the campaign.

Jones has tried to capitalize on the Republican spending in the race to build fundraising momentum, urging her supporters to donate to help flip the district.

“They saw that early voting turnout here is surging. They’re terrified of losing this seat,” Jones said in a campaign email. “I know we can beat them — we just need your help to do it.”

Also this week, the Congressional Leadership Fund, which focuses on growing and preserving the Republican majority in the U.S. House, released an attack ad against Jones that painted her as a big-government liberal who would ensure that Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California is re-elected as the chamber’s speaker.

Democrats have relished the prospect of winning back the U.S. House during the midterm elections, but there has been some debate over whether they would hand back the speaker’s gavel to Pelosi. Jones has said it is “premature” to say whether she’d support Pelosi until after the elections.

Rottinghaus said the early-voting turnout, especially in solidly Democratic El Paso, may have pushed Hurd’s Republican backers back into the race. U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke’s position at the top of the Democratic ticket is giving down-ballot candidates across the state a surge.

“Even if O’Rourke doesn’t win, the Democrats are going to get a good Beto bump because you’ve got energized Democrats across the board, but specifically you’ve got increased enthusiasm across younger voters and Latino voters,” he said.

Jones has focused on turning out people who don’t usually vote, targeting Spanish-speaking Latinos through ads that highlight her mother’s immigrant story.

“Evidence suggests that Latino voters respond to advertising in Spanish,” Rottinghaus said. “That’s a smart plan because all the available evidence suggests that to activate the Latino vote, you need to have strong connection in terms of policy but also in terms of personality. There’s a ‘feel factor.’”

Jones also has turned to high-profile names to stump for her. Supporters have received emails from former U.S. secretary of state and presidential candidate John Kerry, Emily’s List executive director Emily Cain, and former Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, who joined Jones for a campaign event in San Antonio on Saturday.

Hurd has largely stuck to his ground game, visiting areas where he thinks he can win over voters. He especially has gone after areas where he believes he can get people to cross party lines, such as in Eagle Pass, where Democratic Mayor Ramsey Cantu recently stumped for Hurd at a rally.

Hurd also has pulled out the big guns during the final days of his campaign. On Monday, U.S. Secretary of Energy and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry urged voters in a video to support Hurd. On Thursday, he was in El Paso campaigning with Gov. Greg Abbott, widely considered the most popular politician in the state.

“Team Hurd has knocked on over 100,000 doors and made hundreds of thousands of phone calls,” campaign manager Justin Hollis said in a statement. “It is clear that Texans do not want a Washington D.C. implant who takes orders from Nancy Pelosi, who is endorsed by Elizabeth Warren, who wants a government takeover of our healthcare and who wants to destroy our community by closing our military bases. Simply put, they don't want Gina Jones in Congress.”

The help from Republican PACs, Rottinghaus said, has allowed Hurd to stay on message and leave the attacks on Jones to them.

“That’s been his M.O. — do the work and not let politics interfere,” Rottinghaus said. “So he can keep his hands mostly clean as a result of the NRCC dropping in.”

But Democrats have taken issue with Hurd’s characterization of her as an outside candidate and his omission of “Ortiz” when talking about the Democratic candidate. Jones, the daughter of a Filipina immigrant, was born and raised in San Antonio before she left for college and the Air Force. Her last job was working as a security adviser on trade to the president in Washington.

Democrats are now accusing Hurd of not living in the district he’s running to represent. In 2017, The Washington Post reported that Hurd and Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett lived outside the districts they represent. Representatives in Congress need to be more than 25 years old, have lived in the state they seek to represent for at least seven years and be U.S. citizens. But they are not required to live in their districts.

“It's just another example of Hurd's hypocrisy. Time and time again, we see Hurd say one thing and then do the exact opposite,” Jones said in a statement. “People see it in how he says he'll protect our care, but then votes eight times to gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions. People see it in his vote for the GOP Tax Scam that gives handouts to the wealthiest at the expense of working families. At the end of the day — regardless of distraction and mudslinging from my opponent — this race is about the issues, and voters know that Will Hurd's terrible record speaks for itself.”

Hurd’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on his residence.